


It feels good (to be running from the devil)

by impertinences



Category: Penny Dreadful (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Gothic, Mosaic Structure, Season Three Rewrite, Slow Burn, The Moors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-24
Updated: 2017-06-24
Packaged: 2018-11-18 07:36:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11286657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/impertinences/pseuds/impertinences
Summary: The story goes like this:There’s a detective hunting a gunman while the devil hunts a girl. There is a battle of sorts, a test of will and faith, and there is death (as there always is). In the wake of so much calamity, the gunman and the girl make a decision.





	It feels good (to be running from the devil)

**Author's Note:**

> What can I say? This is AU as hell, picking up with S2’s finale, with fandom-appropriate heaviness, prose, and angst. Title comes from the Sir Sly song “High.”

“Tell her you’re searching for her soul.”  
\- Damien Rice

“His love for her denied him all ordinary joys.”  
\- The Drowning King

 

 

There are witches, murders, temptations, possessions, the baring of teeth and claws and a scorpion’s poisonous sting. There are nightmares. _They_ are nightmares. But they are salvation too, at least for one another and only if they are together. So Vanessa offers Ethan an alternative to their ending, an alternative to the fears brought forth from the night, a better option than the one posed by fate.

The story goes like this:

There’s a detective hunting a gunman while the devil hunts a girl. There is a battle of sorts, a test of will and faith, and there is death (as there always is). In the wake of so much calamity, the gunman and the girl make a decision.

Standing in the threshold of her bedroom door at the Grange, wearing an off-shade of white (the less innocuous color of faded ivory rather than fresh cream), Vanessa asks Ethan to leave. She looks smaller and younger than she is in her night dress with its delicate black trim belling out around her upper arms – less formidable – and Ethan, for a moment, sees her differently. Here, in the glow of the early evening, she is not a woman with the devil on her tongue, with blood on her hands, with guilt on her shoulders. Instead, he sees her as the girl she once was, running between Malcom’s tall hedge mazes with the same fearless and unbridled spirit, but more innocent.

Ethan sees past her skin and down into her spirit. She meets his gaze knowingly. Beneath their physical form, hidden alongside their bones and running in their veins, is something dangerous. She can feel the whisper, even now, of the darkness in the shell of her ear – luring her, tempting her. Ethan feels something gnaw and tear in his gut, or deeper, in the depths of his soul, in his marrow. The beast inside of him wants to fist his hands into Vanessa’s dress, to push up the gossamer-thin fabric, to rip and shred.

They do not look away. And this time, unlike other times, Vanessa does not close the door.

This time, he stays the night, and they leave the candles burning to force away their fears (of the future, of each other) and the shadows of their most recent pains.

They make their choice. They do not walk alone.

 

 

\--

 

 

The moors of Ballentree are timeless in their loneliness. Unlike London, perpetually shifting with the advents of time and technology, the West Country’s landscape is primordial: impenetrable darkness, melancholic winds, crawling moss, gargoyle rocks, and blankets of wet, worn grass. It’s a desolate world where warmth and light must be hunted for. It is Bronte’s world – Vanessa made the heroine, traveling the moors in her night gown, wild and wicked, and Ethan the tragic hero, reluctant and guilty.

The Cut-Wife’s cottage is the same, the thatched roof fresh from where Ethan had repaired it the last time, after the storm and the fire. Vanessa’s sigil remains, as do the stones, and the stump of the Cut-Wife’s hanging tree. Inside, the tokens dangle as decorations of lore, rattling when the wind blows, catching the light once Ethan has brought the fire to life, the flames crackling inside of the giant stone-faced fireplace. On the first night, the door bangs open, bringing with it a rush of cold night air. Dried leaves crawl inside, whispering across the floor, plastering themselves like tiny black hands to the dirt floor and the hearth. The stew, simmering in a black pot hanging from a hook in the fireplace, smells of rabbit and herbs and salt.

It is Ethan that closes the door, bolting it against the screaming wind.

There’s a finality to the act. Symbolism to the gesture.

When Vanessa offers her hand to Ethan and he takes it - her fingers cold and small between his larger, calloused ones – she thinks there’s symbolism there too.

 

 

\-- 

 

 

“I don’t want to sleep alone anymore,” Vanessa says, paused at the bottom of the rickety steps, her hand lingering on the vine-tangled banister. “It’s a terrible thing, facing a new sunrise alone.”

“You won’t,” Ethan says, sure as ever, full of gun-smoke and confidence, following with a candle bright enough to cast their shadows large across the earthen wall.

 

 

 

\-- 

 

 

It rains that first night. The clouds grow heavy with condensation until the rain falls and lightening cracks.

In the morning, everything is fresh.

 

 

\--

 

 

She forages (like before). The wilderness can provide. It is a place of untamed woods, but she knows where to look. She’s walked these paths before.

Vanessa leans against the solid trunk of a tree and listens to the screams. Screaming is an art, as is dying, and Vanessa knows both, as she knows how the voice swells and hammers the throat to express the body’s final moments. There’s a rabbit caught in a snare. Its fear is palpable. Nearby dogs have caught the scent, and their distant baying mingles with the rabbit’s scream. The sound becomes a heartbeat, a pulse.

Ethan is chopping wood – if she tries hard enough, she thinks she would be able to hear it, the _thud_ and _thwack_ in a steady rhythm, calling her home – and she can see him clearly in her mind’s eye, the pull of his muscles as he raises the ax, the sweat dampening his hair, the normalcy of the action painful because it is not supposed to be happening at all. Vanessa thinks they are cheating fate, if such a thing is possible, that they are dodging the inevitable. They can only run so far and, even then, they must still eventually face themselves.

The rabbit’s scream is an omen, a portent.

How many has she heard before?

She bends at the knee, eyes dark with defiance, and frees the rabbit from the snare. Quickly, as she was taught, Vanessa hooks her fingers around its neck and secures its back legs in her hand. She pulls in one firm, sudden motion.

The crack of its neck is loud, but the silence that follows is deafening.

 

 

 

\--

 

 

They took what remained of Sembene’s rich, robust tins of coffee with them when they left the Grange along with a few other luxuries Malcom was sure not to miss upon his eventual return from Africa (ivory soaps, salted butter, a small cask of brandy, two jars of preserved jams, and cold, cured meats). Ethan drinks his black from a clay mug. He’s awake too late – the fire barely cracking, the embers smoldering – and the moors are suspiciously silent. He cannot hear the sheep or the rustling of night-time creatures. He cannot hear the moon calling.

When Vanessa puts a hand on his shoulder, breaking his concentration, he hands her his cigarette.

She drags slowly, trading it for his half-finished coffee, and takes a place at the small table to his left.

“Dreams again?”

“More like nightmares,” Ethan says, speaking behind the burn of his cigarette.

“We all have those.”

“How do we stop them?”

“Do you want to?”

“You don’t?” He quirks an eyebrow, and they pass the coffee and cigarette between their hands once more.

Vanessa smiles, not unkindly, but not with happiness either – it is her sad smile, the one she most commonly wears. “There are things you can’t control. Nightmares are our guilt. Our guilt is ours to carry.”

“What if we can’t carry it anymore?”

“We try anyway.”

Ethan makes a noncommittal noise, narrowing his eyes, before passing the last of the cigarette back to her. Their fingers brush. His hands are always so much bigger than she remembers; she thinks of when they had waltzed and how his hands had covered too much surface area on her body too easily, like she was a thing of porcelain. She had liked the heavy pressure of his hand against her waist, against her shoulder blade. Now, his gaze drifts to where her night dress slips against her collarbone, breastbone, and she does not ignore it.

Their entire relationship is built on the foundation of such looks and touches – a silent stare, a brush of skin, a scalding, stolen moment between trials of pain and longing. Both have learned a new kind of fear since the dealings with the Nightcomers, since Brona’s sickness, since Sembene’s death. Vanessa almost reaches out for him, almost strokes the hair that obscures his face. She wants to be able to touch him that way, in comfort, in love, in companionship. But she stills her hand at the last moment.

They move too cautiously these days, as a result of all their losses, as if bodies were buried beneath their feet and threatened to wake from the grave.

 

 

 

\--

 

 

Ethan makes the ride into town once a month to purchase supplies (what little they need – what little can be bought). He is unknown to nearly all the poor folk – the cow farmers, the milk maids, the wretched and miserable – and so they do not bother him, either because of his anonymity or because of the look in his eye and his stalwart gait.

The town has a new lord owning the land and leeching all of its riches, but this one is less superstitious and more aware of the dangers of a mob. He rides through the town on a steed as white and pristine as snow. Only once has he acknowledged Ethan and then he had been feet above the other man, dipping his head to gain a better look before urging his horse onward.

Ethan sometimes wonders about the town and when its girls will come looking for Vanessa in the way they had once looked for the Cut-Wife.

He wonders about the nature of desire – of what it means to want something, to need. He knows there are physical needs, the sort a body requires for basic functioning: food, water, companionship. Then there are the needs built from emotion. These are the more complicated needs, the ones most likely to be tinged in guilt and shame: the shame required to make one rid her body of an innocent life, the desire for glory making a man abandon his dying son in the foothills of Africa or making another accept, however briefly, a witch’s promise. Ethan knows the heart is an organ more lustful than the brain and capable of causing more temperamental desires. It was his heart that lured him into wanting Brona, into loving her as the lost cause that she was, and it is his heart that keeps him with Vanessa now. But he still does not know what he wants, not fully.

He thinks it’s the unknowing, the lack of precision, that makes him hungrier, greedier, more monstrous.

Does he want everything?

Is this why she has brought him here, to a forgotten plot of land in a dejected part of the world, so that his hunger can be set free to rampage? Or has she brought him here so that she can salve his wounds and he hers?

He doesn’t know.

He doesn’t say any of this or ask any questions.

Instead, he buys fresh, clean parchment and a pot of ink, a pack of candles, more coffee, salt, and the other bare necessities their life now requires. He delivers them to Vanessa like a husband returning home with rare gifts, pushing the paper-wrapped packages into her expectant hands, and wondering all the while why she, in all her mystery, cannot speak her desires either.

 

 

 

\--

 

 

There is fear in love.

The moon is bright, full, beckoning. The cottage door is barred from the inside.

There can be so much fear.

 

 

 

\--

 

 

When a wolf’s howl rolls over the moors, Vanessa climbs the stairs into the crooked loft. The Cut-Wife’s books remain on the bedside shelf. Vanessa traces her fingers over their ancient spines. One in particular hums at her touch. It is the oldest and darkest of the books. The secrets it contains inside are dangerous (she’s used it before – she knows the harm it can cause: to others, to her own soul, to the leftovers). But she knows there’s strength inside too, a protection of sorts.

She has another form of protection now.

_Lupus Dei._

(But she has always become too attached to those who seek to save her, hasn’t she? There is a list of names cataloguing failed attempts and in her secret heart, she worries Ethan’s name will soon be added.)

She knows the type of man he’s been (theatric sharpshooter, hired gunman, American outlaw, a lovelorn savage) as opposed to the woman she’s always been: Vanessa Ives (Amunet or much older?). Ethan, longing to be anyone other than himself, and she, so sure and restrained, incapable of being any other. Ethan is the type of man who should haunt her.

He isn’t, and she doesn’t know what to make of that.

When she spreads her tarot cards and casts into the demimonde, she sees his smile, his teeth, the bright glare of his eyes.

 

 

 

\--

 

 

It’s too late again, but this time she’s the one unable to sleep. She sips the last of their supplies of brandy, curled with her legs drawn into her chest, an arm wrapped around her knees, cupping her glass between her fingers. It’s a child’s pose, one far less refined than her usual stance. Her hair is dark as midnight, long and free, her dressing gown loose around her shoulders. Her cards have been put away for more than a week now.

There is too much silence in the universe, too many unanswered questions. It feels like the calm before the storm, but she keeps telling herself to wait – to desist – to belong. She keeps telling herself, but still she is unable to sleep.

She had unwrapped herself from the long length of the man upstairs because of the whispering wind. Because of the thickness of the darkness and how it beckoned.

“Vanessa.”

She appreciates how he says her name, the lull in his voice, the gravel and grit of it.

“Mr. Chandler.” She takes a drink of her brandy without turning, feeling his approach rather than watching it. When he stands in front of her, tall and fierce, she does not lift her gaze. She stares past him, forcing herself to see the outline he creates.

Ethan moves to take the glass – in retrospect, Vanessa will convince herself of this, that he was grabbing the glass rather than her, only the glass – but it slips and tumbles to the floor. She bends, reaching, at the same time he does, so their hands fumble in the darkness and that’s how she feels now – like she’s fumbling, lost without her bearings, at sea and anchorless.

So Vanessa kisses him. Or maybe Ethan kisses her. It’s the first time all over again, only without the storm, except the storm is inside now – their wild, beating hearts, their fervid blood. They don’t know what to say, so they kiss. She grabs at his undershirt, and her mouth is a wave crashing against his. His is warm, open, one of his strong arms already coming to circle around her waist so that he can pull and crush her to him. For all his intention, there’s a gentleness still. She can feel it in his other hand, in how he pushes his fingers into her hair so that he’s cradling her head, cupping the back of her neck.

When she opens her mouth more, pushing a hand into his chest, he groans. She swallows the sound.

He lifts her, pushing her against the edge the wooden bench, her legs falling open. The hand that had been gripping her hair moves to her legs, his fingers skimming the backs of her calves, but he’s still kissing her. He’s kissing her the way she’s always wanted to be kissed, like it’s a vow and a declaration.

She shoves her hand further into his chest, her nails raking, and rears her head back. It hurts.

“ _No_ ,” Vanessa all but growls, her match-strike voice sharper, raspier, all the breath taken from her.

Ethan grabs her arms, his forehead pressing against hers, until she’s forced to look at him. “What are you afraid of?” There’s frustration there, pitching suddenly into his voice, and maybe something close to spite.

She laughs, dark and bitter as black cherry and tar, the sound landing against his mouth like a poison.

Vanessa can’t tell him that she’s used to the longing, that she’s scared of the possibility, that she wants.

She wants so much.

 

 

 

\-- 

 

 

The first night, when she sleeps, Vanessa holds on to him. It’s closer to clinging.

 

 

 

\--

 

 

Theirs is a sickness. It’s in their blood, in their being, as incurable as a cancer or the plague. It could be a madness. It could be poetry.

Vanessa only knows to fight through prayer. Her history with the Almighty is complicated, but her body and muscles remember the act of penance. She seeks atonement – for her sins, and the sins of others, for all their weaknesses and their faults. With her hands clasped and her knees sore from kneeling, she tries not to waste away. Her tongue knows Latin as well as the devil’s language. In this she tries to do good.

Ethan is a godly man for all his silent protests otherwise. He pretends to not understand how a creature of the night can desire innocence, but she sees past him (as she always has). He thinks of the Native American tribes – the ones he loved, the ones he slaughtered – and their reverence. Theirs is a simplicity he longs for. All the old ghosts and old gods who call to him as much as they call to her.

On a cold night, Vanessa lights a circle of candles. She feels the cross around her neck. Listening to her, half-asleep on their makeshift bed, Ethan thinks she could be angelic, but he too knows better. She is part of the darkness now.

It doesn’t make him long for her salvation any less. And although he doesn’t understand her words, he knows she prays for him too, for his redemption.

In this, as in all things, they are bound together.

 

 

 

\--

 

 

Ethan is prepared to bleed.

His is a savagery unbeknownst to a man – the violence inherent to beasts. When the moon is full again, his body succumbs to its secondary nature. He feels the threat of the wolf in his veins the way animals sense lightening hours before the storm’s arrival. When he leaves the cottage, Vanessa does not ask. She seals the door for the second time.

 

 

 

\--

 

 

He still has blood on his breath when he kisses her again.

There may be blood beneath his nails. Dirt clings to his collar. She can taste salt on his neck when she licks the thick vein there.

“I can’t,” she says by way of protest, her hands in his hair, his mouth on her ear.

“I’m not afraid.”

“But I am.”

He kisses her again. He swallows her fear and the last shreds of her restraint.

 

 

 

\--

 

 

She is not a lost cause. Vanessa tells herself this repeatedly once she’s taken him inside of her.

 

 

\--

 

 

Ethan fucks her slowly. He keeps his hands in her hair, his body braced above her, their skin flushed and hot against each other’s. His mouth is by her ear, and his words are an anchor, torturing her and beckoning all at once.

It is not like fucking Dorian. She is not unbridled; she is not pulled into a depthless void. She’s on a tightrope, balancing, trembling beneath him and desperate for the taste of his mouth and the brush of his hand across her cheek. She lifts her legs and wraps them around his waist, pulling him closer, deeper inside of her. When she arches her back, her eyelids shivering, he groans into the pale column of her neck.

Her nails rake across his shoulders. He fists her hair tighter in his grasp.

She can feel the heat blossoming low in her belly, an urgency making her hips buck as she rises to meet him. It’s not enough – the shallow thrusts, his heavy eyes on her face, the hold he has on her – and Vanessa keens. She thinks it’s the whimper that causes the ghostly fingertips to trace down her spine, cold as death, and the air to thicken. Something inside of her is unraveling. She’s chasing the crest of her desire, and she’ll pay for it.

She can feel the darkness open around her like a bottomless well.

Vanessa gasps, arching again, her nails much sharper than before.

When Ethan pulls back, he grabs her wrists – not unkindly – and untangles from her hold, lifting her hand to his face. He kisses her palms, the bump of bone above her veins, his hips barely moving now.

“Come back to me,” he murmurs, his mouth shaping the words against her fingers.

She cries a little then.

He makes her come like that, the tears thick on her eyelashes, the darkness lapping at the edge. It’s a cruel kindness.

 

 

 

\--

 

 

Ethan falls asleep with Vanessa curled against his side, her ear close to his heart. She traces idle patterns against his side, the heat slowly leaving their bodies, the light and focus returning to the room.

They can’t stay like this forever, she knows. She’s seen as much in her cards.

But for a moment, they can face their nightmares together.

 

 


End file.
